List of historical characters
| Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini, called "Masolino da Panicale" |
Painter. Famous for the cycle of frescoes at the Florentine church Santa Maria del Carmine. His painting style is old fashioned and very "gothic like" compared to Masaccio's. When he was called to Rome to paint the cycle of Holy Catherine of Alexandria Masaccio followed him. Masolino's "diary" is strictly fictive. All events are the results of the author's fantasy. |
Tommaso di Simoni Guidi Cassai, called "Masaccio" (born 1401, San Giovanni Valdarno; died 1428, Roma) |
Painter. He was more strongly influenced by the architect Brunelleschi and the sculptor Donatello, both of whom were his contemporaries in Florence. He was the first painter who converted Brunelleschi's re-discovery of the linear perspective. He prepared the ground for all painters to come. Most famous for the cycle of frescoes at the Florentine church Santa Maria del Carmine. In 1428 he followed his friend and teacher Masolino to Rome where he vanished without a trace the same year at his twenty seventh birthday. Masaccio's work exerted a strong influence on the course of later Florentine art and particularly on the work of Michelangelo. | Giovanni di Simoni Giudi Cassai, called "Lo Scheggia" (born 1406, San Giovanni Valdarno; died 1486, Firenze) | Masaccio's younger brother, known as painter, but without serious success. His wide ranging artistic activities include, apart from painting, the creation of furnishings for Florentine houses like coffers, chests, and bedheads. | Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi, called "Donatello" (born ca. 1386, Firenze; died 1466, Firenze) |
Master of sculpture in both marble and bronze, one of the greatest of all Italian Renaissance artists. Most famous for his bronze "David", the first life-sized free standing figure since the antiquity and the marble figure of "Habakkuk", the so-called Zuccone ("pumpkin," because of its bald head). His friendship with Cosimo de'Medici was legendary. They are even buried side by side at the church of San Lorenzo, Florence. | Filippo Brunelleschi (born 1377, Firenze; died 1446, Firenze) |
Florentine architect and sculptor. He was one of the most famous of all architects - a Florentine hero on account of the celebrated dome (1420-36) he built for the city's cathedral - and one of the group of artists, including Alberti, Donatello, and Masaccio, who created the Renaissance style. Although he was not a painter, Brunelleschi was a pioneer in perspective; in his treatise on painting Alberti describes how Brunelleschi devised a method for representing objects in depth on a flat surface by means of using a single vanishing point. He was Donatello's closest friend. | Lorenzo Ghiberti (born 1378, Firenze; died 1455, Firenze) |
Sculptor. One of the most important early Renaissance sculptors of Florence; his work and writings formed the basis for much of the style and aims of the later High Renaissance. His greatest work, the third set of bronze doors for the baptistery at Florence (completed in 1452), show a development toward naturalistic movement, volume, and perspective and a greater idealization of subject. These doors, each portraying five scenes from the Old Testament, were called the "Gates of Paradise" by Michelangelo. |
